Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at:
http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ <A HREF="">ctrl</A> ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
--- Begin Message ----Caveat Lector-Please send as far and wide as possible. Thanks, Robert Sterling Editor, The Konformist http://www.konformist.com http://www.konformist.com/50reasons/50reasons.htm 50 Reasons Not to Vote for Bush Order at Amazon at: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1932595023/thekonformist Journalist Requests Temporary Restraining Orders Against Use of Voting Machines & Absentee Ballots Urges Use Of Remote Polling Precincts & Provisional Ballots By Jeff Holubitsky The Edmonton Journal 10-17-4 PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- Last week, freelance journalist Lynn Landes filed two Temporary Restraining Orders (TRO) in federal district court in Philadelphia. Landes is one of the nation's leading journalists on voting technology and democracy issues. She is attempting to halt the use of voting machines and absentee ballots in the upcoming presidential election. In her lawsuits, Landes says there are two legal standards for any voting process. These standards are described in the oversight function of Federal observers under federal statute, Title 42 § 1973f of the United State Code, (1) "...whether persons who are entitled to vote are being permitted to vote," and (2) "...whether votes cast by persons entitled to vote are being properly tabulated." Landes claims that the use of absentee voting and voting machines fails to meet either standard. She says that the use of absentee ballots and voting machines is effectively unobservable and therefore denies meaningful oversight by election officials, poll watchers, Federal observers, the press, and the public. "This nation's voting system is a total sham, " says Landes. "In the upcoming election, a couple of corporations (ES&S and Diebold) with strong ties to the Republic Party will count 80% of the vote in virtual secrecy. Democratic candidates should be in federal court now protesting this insanity. It might be too late after the election. Landes claims that elections in America are not being properly administered under the U.S. Constitution or federal law. Direct public participation and effective oversight is impossible to all intents and purposes, she says. "It's like holding a public meeting at City Hall and then shutting out the public. Vote fraud and system failure can easily occur and remain completely undetectable. The end result is that we have no legitimate way to prove who really wins elections in this country. And the very last thing we should do is to trust the corporate media and their polling organizations to tell us what's going on," she warns. Originally, Landes filed two Complaints in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania on July 2, 2004. However, since the presidential election was fast approaching, Landes decided to also file TROs. The District Court ruled immediately against Landes on the issue of absentee ballots. On Friday, Oct. 15th, she filed an appeal to that decision in the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. The TRO filed against the use of voting machines has yet to be scheduled. In her appeal to the Third Circuit, Landes suggests the establishment of remote polling precincts for absentee voters. She says that remote precincts can be set up at municipal buildings and college campuses across the country, as well as at embassies, consulates, overseas military bases, and onboard military ships. The use of a universal ballot for president and vice president would be a practical remedy for those two races. Landes sees a logistical nightmare if other races were included, however. "If there isn't sufficient time for these remedies to be put into place, the Supreme Court should order a delay of the election for no more than 30 days," says Landes. "This is not a perfect solution, but at least it would be legal." See Landes lawsuit filings at: http://www.ecotalk.org/VotingSecurity.htm Contact: Lynn Landes (215) 629-3553 [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***** Block the Vote By Paul Krugman The New York Times Friday 15 October 2004 Earlier this week former employees of Sproul & Associates (operating under the name Voters Outreach of America), a firm hired by the Republican National Committee to register voters, told a Nevada TV station that their supervisors systematically tore up Democratic registrations. The accusations are backed by physical evidence and appear credible. Officials have begun a criminal investigation into reports of similar actions by Sproul in Oregon. Republicans claim, of course, that they did nothing wrong - and that besides, Democrats do it, too. But there haven't been any comparably credible accusations against Democratic voter-registration organizations. And there is a pattern of Republican efforts to disenfranchise Democrats, by any means possible. Some of these, like the actions reported in Nevada, involve dirty tricks. For example, in 2002 the Republican Party in New Hampshire hired an Idaho company to paralyze Democratic get-out-the-vote efforts by jamming the party's phone banks. But many efforts involve the abuse of power. For example, Ohio's secretary of state, a Republican, tried to use an archaic rule about paper quality to invalidate thousands of new, heavily Democratic registrations. That attempt failed. But in Wisconsin, a Republican county executive insists that this year, when everyone expects a record turnout, Milwaukee will receive fewer ballots than it got in 2000 or 2002 - a recipe for chaos at polling places serving urban, mainly Democratic voters. And Florida is the site of naked efforts to suppress Democratic votes, and the votes of blacks in particular. Florida's secretary of state recently ruled that voter registrations would be deemed incomplete if those registering failed to check a box affirming their citizenship, even if they had signed an oath saying the same thing elsewhere on the form. Many counties are, sensibly, ignoring this ruling, but it's apparent that some officials have both used this rule and other technicalities to reject applications as incomplete, and delayed notifying would-be voters of problems with their applications until it was too late. Whose applications get rejected? A Washington Post examination of rejected applications in Duval County found three times as many were from Democrats, compared with Republicans. It also found a strong tilt toward rejection of blacks' registrations. The case of Florida's felon list - used by state officials, as in 2000, to try to wrongly disenfranchise thousands of blacks - has been widely reported. Less widely reported has been overwhelming evidence that the errors were deliberate. In an article coming next week in Harper's, Greg Palast, who originally reported the story of the 2000 felon list, reveals that few of those wrongly purged from the voting rolls in 2000 are back on the voter lists. State officials have imposed Kafkaesque hurdles for voters trying to get back on the rolls. Depending on the county, those attempting to get their votes back have been required to seek clemency for crimes committed by others, or to go through quasi- judicial proceedings to prove that they are not felons with similar names. And officials appear to be doing their best to make voting difficult for those blacks who do manage to register. Florida law requires local election officials to provide polling places where voters can cast early ballots. Duval County is providing only one such location, when other counties with similar voting populations are providing multiple sites. And in Duval and other counties the early voting sites are miles away from precincts with black majorities. Next week, I'll address the question of whether the votes of Floridians with the wrong color skin will be fully counted if they are cast. Mr. Palast notes that in the 2000 election, almost 180,000 Florida votes were rejected because they were either blank or contained overvotes. Demographers from the U.S. Civil Rights Commission estimate that 54 percent of the spoiled ballots were cast by blacks. And there's strong evidence that this spoilage didn't reflect voters' incompetence: it was caused mainly by defective voting machines and may also reflect deliberate vote-tampering. The important point to realize is that these abuses aren't aberrations. They're the inevitable result of a Republican Party culture in which dirty tricks that distort the vote are rewarded, not punished. It's a culture that will persist until voters - whose will still does count, if expressed strongly enough - hold that party accountable. ***** Republican Dirty Tricks By Max Blumenthal, AlterNet Posted on October 15, 2004 http://www.alternet.org/story/20194/ Just how close is dirty trickster Nathan Sproul to the Bush/Cheney re- election campaign? AlterNet has learned that Sproul, the former Arizona Republican Party and Christian Coalition director, has cozy ties to a group of consultants working on the Bush/Cheney campaign. According to a Democratic source well-placed in Arizona political circles, Sproul's firm, Sproul and Associates, operates next door to the office of Gordon C. James Public Relations (GCJPR) in Phoenix, a Republican PR company which is coordinating various Bush/Cheney campaign events nationwide and has provided PR services for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. Last spring, one of GCJPR's executives, who is an advisory board member of Bush's re-election campaign, served as the chair of a ballot campaign Sproul was quarterbacking, while, according to the source, Sproul collaborated with a GCJPR employee who is a White House consultant on a scheme to get independent candidate Ralph Nader on the Arizona ballot. In both instances, Sproul's company, Voter Outreach of America, was involved in gathering signatures. In Nevada, Voter Outreach of America is accused by former employees of shredding the registration forms of thousands of Democrats; in West Virginia, Voter Outreach of America employees say they were instructed to mislead voters into registering Republican and voting for Bush; in Oregon, yet another swing state, the state attorney general has opened a criminal investigation into allegations that Sproul's firm, which is Voter Outreach of America's parent company, was involved in intentionally destroying or discarding voter registration forms signed by Democrats. According to OpenSecrets.org, Sproul's firm received $125,000 this year from the Republican National Committee for voter registration and another $500,000 for "political consulting." The cozy ties between Sproul and Bush operatives should raise a serious question: Is Sproul simply an overzealous lone wolf, or are his activities part of a concerted effort by the Bush/Cheney campaign to subvert the democratic process? Gordon C. James, the founder and director of GCJPR, is a longtime Bush apparatchik. According to his bio on GCJPR's website, James helped handle media relations for President George H.W. Bush as the White House "lead advance representative." During George W. Bush's 2000 presidential campaign, James' firm handled PR and event management for Bush's Iowa Caucus campaign, all three debates against Al Gore, two campaign train trips and his election night festivities in Austin, Texas. Recently, GCJPR organized a Bush mega-rally in Phoenix and an appearance by Laura Bush at another campaign rally in Minneapolis. James also worked for five months as L. Paul Bremer's spinmeister in Baghdad. James said all of his firm's activities on behalf of the Bush/Cheney campaign were performed "on a volunteer basis," though GCJPR has received funding this year from the Republican National Committee. And James maintained that though he knows Sproul, they don't work together. "Nathan works more on the political side," James stated. "We're a PR firm." Sproul did not respond to requests for an interview. James did not mention that one of GCJPR's executives, George W. Bush for President advisory board member Lisa James, served as chairwoman of an Arizona ballot initiative that Sproul spearheaded last spring called "No Taxpayer Money For Politicians." The ballot measure, which was soundly defeated, was a right-wing, corporate-funded effort to ban candidates for state office from receiving public money for their campaigns. Sproul's Voter Outreach of America spearheaded the measure's petition drive. In her capacity as chairwoman, Lisa James operated directly out of Sproul's office. What's more, according to a well-placed source who spoke on condition of anonymity, a GCJPR employee, Meghan Rose, worked with Sproul on a clandestine campaign to get Nader on the Arizona ballot last spring. Last June, Derek Lee of Lee Petitions told me that while his company was handling various signature drives in Arizona, Sproul's Voter Outreach of America was paying petitioners to collect as many signatures as they could for Nader's ballot qualification campaign. Once rumors began emerging about covert Republican assistance to Nader, Sproul "put the hush-hush on it real quick," Lee said. In order to cover his tracks, Sproul devised a clever scheme. According to the source, Sproul tasked GCJPR's Rose to drive the Nader petitions to a "low-end" motel in Scottsdale where Jenny Breslyn, the person officially contracted by the Nader campaign to oversee its signature drive, was staying. There, Breslyn and her employees mixed the petitions in with their own, in effect, brushing them clean of Sproul's fingerprints. Rose has worked as a consultant for the Bush White House Easter Egg Roll, the State Department and the Republican National Committee. She is currently working out of James' RNC-funded shop and as a volunteer on Bush's re-election campaign. Confronted with the accusation that she served as the baglady for Sproul's Nader ballot scheme, Rose would not issue an outright denial. "I do not work for Nathan Sproul," she stated repeatedly. "I don't even know how you got my name." Asked again to confirm or deny the accusation, Rose became testy. "I didn't do anything. I've shaken Nathan Sproul's hand once," she said. Reached by cellphone, Jenny Breslyn refused to speak directly to the accusation that Rose delivered Sproul's Nader petitions to her, referring the question to Sproul, who could not be reached. However, she did volunteer that in her dealings with Sproul, "I do know a Meghan." Sproul's dirty tricks may have finally caught up with him, though far from his stomping grounds in Arizona. In Oregon, Sproul's firm is being investigated by the state attorney general and could face a class-C felony, punishable by five years in jail, for allegedly altering and destroying voter registration forms. And in Nevada, state election officials have just launched an investigation into whether Sproul's Voters Outreach of America destroyed the registration forms of exclusively Democratic voters. On Wednesday, Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe wrote a letter to his Republican counterpart, Ed Gillespie, demanding that the Republican National Committee detail its involvement with Sproul's alleged voter fraud. "We are deeply concerned these reports of Republican National Committee funded felonious activities in these states could serve to discourage all voters from voting because of concerns of problems with their ballot," McAuliffe wrote. "Regardless of party or candidate, it is the civic and moral duty of both parties to encourage complete and full participation in the democratic process." ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> <FONT COLOR="#000099">$9.95 domain names from Yahoo!. Register anything. </FONT><A HREF="http://us.click.yahoo.com/J8kdrA/y20IAA/yQLSAA/zgSolB/TM";><B>Click Here!</B></A> --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> The Konformist must make a request for donations via Paypal, at Paypal.com. If you can and desire, please feel free to send money to help The Konformist through the following email address: [EMAIL PROTECTED] If you are interested in a free subscription to The Konformist Newswire, please visit: http://www.groups.yahoo.com/group/konformist Or, e-mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the subject: "I NEED 2 KONFORM!!!" (Okay, you can use something else, but it's a kool catch phrase.) Visit the Klub Konformist at Yahoo!: http://www.groups.yahoo.com/group/klubkonformist Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/konformist/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ www.ctrl.org DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ <A HREF="http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/">ctrl</A> ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
--- End Message ---
